Impact.
71
Supposedly it took God six days to create the earth. He was catatonic on the seventh.
Fact.
Catatonia is a condition marked by a deficit of motor activity. People avoid bathing and grooming, make little or no eye contact with others, can be mute and rigid, and neither initiate nor respond to social behavior.
Sidebar.
Patients in a minimally conscious state can show characteristics very close to that of normal sleep in a healthy subject. They can show changes in “slow wave” activity in the front of the brain, which is considered important for learning and neural plasticity. These patients can also produce NREM, nonrapid eye movement, slow wave sleep, and REM, rapid eye movement sleep.
Translation?
They dream.
And so it is that when I open my eyes Dorie is sitting in a chair across the room. She has the kindest face in the world.
“Hi, Billy.”
“Hi, Dorie.”
“Love you.”
“I love you too.”
She stands. She holds out her hand to me. Rising from the bed, I take it. Dorie turns and leads me through the open doorway. She takes me out into the hallway, which is a road. She takes me home. She takes me to the house from the photographs, the one in Tulare, the one where Mom grew flowers, the one we lived in before fate took over. The house where the two of us were born. There is no one there but us. No Mom. No Dad. No Beatrix, Frank, or Lorna. There is no furniture in the house. Instead, the small rooms are filled with drums. Drums of all kinds. Drums of all different sizes. New drums. Old drums. Broken drums.
“Inside of these are all the things that box you in and hold you back,” says Dorie. “Shall we open them?”
“No,” I say. “This is just a dream. This is my brain spouting useless information.”
“Oh, Scarecrow,” Dorie says. “If you only had a brain.”
We open the drums one by one. We pull off the heads and look inside. It takes a long time to open all of them. Every time I think we’re finished, Dorie leads me to another drum-filled room. It takes us days. Weeks. Years. But we go to every room and we open every drum and in the end I know what’s in every one.
“They’re empty,” I say.
“Surprise,” says Dorie. “Every one. Except this one.”
She turns and she points and I see that there is one last drum sitting in the middle of the floor where it hadn’t been before.
“Play it,” says Dorie.
I do a roll on it with my fingers. The drum has a deep, good sound. It sounds like a hollow log by a fire.
“Nice,” I say.
“Open it,” says Dorie.
I do. I take the lid off. I look inside. The drum is filled with tiny shards of shattered glass.
“Pour it out,” says Dorie.
I upend the drum and the bits and pieces of glass fall silently to the ground. They lie there, piled for a moment, and then they begin to melt. They form a shimmering, silver circle on the floor, a circle that is a symbol of God, whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere.
“Now look,” says Dorie.
I look down into what is now a mirror and what I see is—
Me.
“Not so scary, is he?” says Dorie.
“No. Just ugly.”
“There’s no such thing.” Dorie smiles. “Are you ready?”
“As I’ll ever be.”
“Good enough.”
Dorie takes me by the hand. Once again, she pulls me out into the world. The last thing I hear as I’m born again is her voice whispering in my ear.
“When you make me an excuse, Billy, you do us both a disservice.”
72
Okay, maybe I’m exaggerating when I say I was catatonic, but between sleeping pretty much constantly and, when I was awake, not really eating or speaking and ignoring everything and everyone, I might as well have been. But then, when I heard one of the doctors talking to Mom about electroconvulsive treatment, meaning shock therapy, I found myself miraculously cured.
It occurred to me more than once in the weeks and months that followed, I’d been catatonic for a long, long time.
The media made a big deal out of everything. As if there was nothing more important in the world to write or talk about. In less than twenty-four hours we had gone from being the Night Visitors to being the Rich Kid Posse. We went viral, all of us. In fact, we had a fervent fan base, a Facebook page, and there were any number of copycat crimes in different cities across the country.
There were all sorts of op-eds and speeches about the so-called millennial generation, the self-entitled generation, the unemployed generation, the “young adults living at home with their parents” generation and the out-of-luck, no-future, generally screwed generation. There were also some editorials advocating gun control but those were pretty much ignored as usual.
I was put under house arrest, which means I was allowed to go home and shut the door.
Grounded!
The justice system works pretty well when you have bucks. Mom and Dad hired expensive lawyers. The lawyers took the case to a public hearing, which pretty much boils down to the court presenting its evidence against you and you getting the opportunity to make all sorts of excuses. The expensive lawyers hired expensive psychologists. One of them, I kid you not, was Dr. Belafonte, who right off the bat said I’d been in a state of clinical depression since the death of my twin sister and that my parents’ separation had fueled it. Seizing on the moment, the lawyers immediately asked if I was in danger of becoming emotionally exhausted by the proceedings because at eight hundred bucks an hour they wanted to keep the court dates going for as long as possible. Dr. Belafonte, who was also getting paid by the hour, said yes I was, and we ended up adjourning for the day.
In the courtroom, Frank and Lorna and Beatrix, Mom and Dad, all sat side by side. Having Mrs. Taylor around twenty-four-seven had made Dad realize he didn’t really like her all that much and he’d already been looking for an excuse to come back. My arrest was totally serendipitous in that it gave Mom and Dad something they could mutually blame themselves for, and in order to do it full-time, they were attempting a reconciliation. The only condition was that Dad sell the wine cellar and stop drinking. It was working out pretty well so far.
Serendipity is another word for fate.
In the beginning Frank and Lorna and Beatrix all started off staying at the house because we had the room. Frank and Lorna lasted three days before Beatrix drove them crazy enough to move to a motel, which Dad, of course, paid for. Two days later, Mom actually worked up the courage to ask Beatrix to leave. Beatrix smiled—really smiled—hugged Mom, told her how much she respected her for saying that, and moved over to the same motel where Frank and Lorna were staying so she could drive them crazy some more. Mom and Dad were so pleased, they invited Beatrix to join everyone for Christmas.
On the fourth day of hearings, another psychologist took the stand and the lawyers asked him about Ephraim. Ephraim, it turned out, had been on about a million different mood stabilizers, seizure inhibitors, and antidepressants. The psychologist couldn’t discuss what Ephraim’s issues were but he did say that Ephraim had been seeing him twice a week for over a year. When asked if Ephraim had had suicidal tendencies, the shrink said it was private information. Which of course meant Ephraim did. Everyone felt very sorry for Ephraim’s parents, who went out of their way to say they’d done everything they could for him.
Also during the hearings, Mr. Esposito, the principal of High School High, who it turned out had the first name of Ron, got on the stand to tell everyone, in his surprisingly melodious voice, that Ephraim, Deliza, and I were model scholar-citizens who had come under the influence of another student, one with a criminal past and the personality profile of a charismatic sociopath. In other words, it was all Twom’s fault. His grandmother stopped coming after the first week.
Gretchen never came at all. Dr. Quinn
had suffered a fractured skull and broken ribs in the fall down the stairs, all of which would heal with time. He declined to press charges. Gretchen changed the number to her cell phone. E-mail messages came back as undeliverable. Letters were unanswered. I didn’t really expect otherwise. In fact, it was probably for the best. And if it wasn’t, still, it was retribution for all the bad things I’d done.
I did get a nice note from Miss Barber. And John Montebello got on the local news one night and was so arrogant and repulsive, a national news columnist suggested I change my plea to temporary insanity coupled with justifiable attempted homicide.
The expensive lawyers and the expensive psychologists finally worked out a deal with the court that said something to the effect that I would plead guilty to a misdemeanor charge of breaking and entering and in return receive no jail time and a year’s probation. Everyone went home relieved and happy, confident that because of my history, my future potential, and the family’s good standing in the community, justice had been done. Needless to say, the civil suits with different families got settled for an enormous pile of dough.
Mom and Dad moved up the coast to a place not too much different from the one they’d left. It was a nice house. It had four bedrooms, six bathrooms, a guesthouse, a pool, and a four-car garage. It had a nice view. Dad joined a golf club. Mom found new tennis partners. They settled in.
Sometimes it seemed like they hadn’t moved on at all.
73
But I did.
I had no choice, really. Just as I had been touched by Twom’s right hand, the one tattooed with “chaos,” I had also been touched by his left hand, the one marked “change.”
That summer and fall I took a lot of college-level classes. I retook my SATs plus the ACT test the following spring. I did well. Useless information proved to be not so useless after all. The spring and summer after that I applied to a number of colleges for January admissions. Fortunately none of the applications had questions about breaking and entering and I pretty much got accepted to every one of them.
I decided to get away from the West Coast and chose a university in New York City.
That’s where I am now.
It’s almost bearable.
No. Actually it’s really pretty good.
It’s a nice place. It has a nice campus, all brick and ivy. It has smart teachers. I like listening to them.
The school has a great chapel. It was built in 1904 and is nondenominational. I spend a lot of time there just sitting and thinking. People play folk music in the vestibules.
It sounds crazy but I’m considering a dual major in philosophy and religion. I’m not going to become a minister or teacher or anything. At least I don’t think I am. But I’m interested in how faith, or the lack thereof, has historically affected man’s conception of himself and his existence.
Why are we so tough on ourselves? Why, if we have faith in God, does He have so little faith in us?
When I’m not in the chapel or in classes, I pretty much spend most of my time in the college library. I’ll still read just about anything, but these days if you ask me what I’m reading and I think you’re serious, I might even talk to you about it. Especially if you’re buying the beer.
I avoid the Internet, newspapers, and all television as much as humanly possible.
People talk about a lot here. Sometimes they’re even serious about it. Technology will save the world. Soccer will save the world. Social justice will save the world. Idealism will save the world. Cold fusion, music, women’s track teams, and alien ants will save the world. The desire to save the world will save the world.
I occasionally get recognized but not too often. For some reason, the port-wine hemangioma on my right cheek has faded. It’s hardly noticeable anymore. Or maybe it’s just that I don’t notice it. Usually if someone figures out who I am and what I did, they’ll ask a few questions and I’ll answer as best and honestly as I can and then we’ll all forget about it and move on.
I sleep well. When I sleep my dreams don’t bother me.
Last night I had a dream about Gretchen.
I’m sitting on a bench. When I look up Gretchen is walking across the campus quadrangle. She’s carrying a backpack. She’s with friends. She’s a student here. When I stand up, she sees me and stops. She turns to her friends and tells them to go on without her. They do. And then she’s running toward me and I’m moving toward her and there’s joy in her face as she opens her arms to embrace me. But then like a projector chewing film, the dream blurred and I woke up.
I would take that dream and be sad the next day anytime.
I think about Twom a lot. I think of him being so nice to the heavy girl, Ophelia. I think about me turning in essays for him. I think of him raising his hand in class because at last he knew the answer. I think of him opening the car door that night for Gretchen and me. Little Red! I think about him flying, flying, flying away. It’s what he wanted more than anything and maybe that’s exactly what he did in the end.
I think about Ephraim sometimes. Babbling about his video games. Talking about Superman. Living in his virtual world. Maybe he’s living there now. If he is, the avatar he’s created looks just like Twom.
Sometimes I even think about Deliza.
“Got your skateboard, Billy?”
The last time I saw her was in a courtroom. My defense had worked so well that Deliza’s father’s expensive lawyers and psychologists had used it too. She was crying tears of happiness. She was wearing a nun’s habit.
No, not really.
She was beautiful, poised, and perfectly dressed. Her dark hair had new streaks of bright blond. But as she turned for the door, her eyes looked right through me. None of this was happening, and if it was, she couldn’t have cared less.
I go running every day in the park. I do a minimum of eight miles. I run easily. My stride is long and steady and my breath turns to steam in the cool air.
Oxygen changes things.
Sometimes I stop and stare at the tops of the buildings that surround the park. They look like kings and queens and bishops and knights on a chessboard. I don’t have to tell you who the pawns are.
This is what I wish.
I wish I could tell my fellow Night Visitors that I’ve learned something. I wish I could tell them that there’s no hiding from life. No running from life. That no matter how tragic it appears to be, you can’t live in fear of life. That other than by dying, there’s no escaping life. No matter how many skies have fallen, once you decide you want to live, well … amor fati.
Love your fate.
Anything less is just not an option.
Acknowledgments
Serendipity is defined as fortuitous happenstance. I mention this because there are so many people who have seemed to arrive serendipitously—meaning just when I needed them—in my writing life. I’m talking about directors and actors, producers and agents, teachers and fellow writers and, most of all, friends. Hopefully I’ll have the opportunity to recognize and thank all of you personally one day. In the meantime, the playwright in me would like to acknowledge the early encouragement and support of Lynne Meadow and Jack O’Brien, the screenwriter in me would like to thank the inimitable Jeremy Zimmer, and the fledgling novelist in me would like to say thank you to the amazing Linda Chester as well as to Sara Goodman and all the wonderful people at St. Martin’s Press.
About the Author
STEPHEN METCALFE wrote the screenplays for Jacknife (starring Robert De Niro and Ed Harris) and Cousins (starring Ted Danson and Isabella Rossellini). He also wrote production drafts for Pretty Woman, Arachnophobia, and Mr. Holland’s Opus, among others. His stage plays have been produced in New York and at theaters throughout the United States, Europe, and Japan. He is an associate artist at The Old Globe Theatre in San Diego and has been an adjunct professor in dramatic writing at the University of California at San Diego, the University of San Diego, and San Diego State University. Visit him online at www.stephenmetcalfe.ne
t.
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
THE TRAGIC AGE. Copyright © 2015 by Stephen Metcalfe. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
www.stmartins.com
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The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:
Metcalfe, Stephen
The tragic age / Stephen Metcalfe.—1st Ed.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-1-250-05441-8 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-4668-5735-3 (e-book)
1. Teenage boys—Fiction. 2. Friendship—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3563.E833T73 2015
813'.54—dc23
2014034641
e-ISBN 9781466857353
First Edition: March 2015
The Tragic Age Page 20